Faceless Men
The Faceless Men are a secretive and feared guild of assassins based in the Free City of Braavos, the most expensive and accomplished killers in the known world. They worship death in the form of the Many-Faced God, holding that all the gods of all the peoples of the world -- the Stranger of the Faith of the Seven, the Drowned God of the ironborn, and the rest -- are but different faces of a single deity, the god of death, to whom every man and woman owes a final gift.
They operate from the House of Black and White, a temple of black and white stone above the harbor of Braavos, where troubled souls come to receive the peace of death and the servants of the god move silently among them.
Origins
By their own telling, the order began in the slave mines of Valyria, where a servant of the Many-Faced God first granted the gift of death to a suffering slave, and then to others who prayed for release. From these beginnings the guild grew, and Braavos itself -- a city founded by escaped slaves -- became its home.
Beliefs and Methods
A Faceless Man holds that he is no one. To serve the god he must shed his own identity entirely, becoming a vessel without name, face, or self. Acolytes train for years, learning to lie, to mix poisons, to glamour their features, and to wear the preserved faces of the dead drawn from the temple's vaults, taking on a victim's likeness as needed.
Their services can be bought, but the price is ruinous -- a king's ransom or more -- for to ask a Faceless Man to kill is to make an offering to death itself, and the god must always be paid his due. A life given to the order must be balanced by a life taken.
Notable Members
- Jaqen H'ghar, who first revealed the order to Arya Stark
- The Kindly Man, a senior servant of the House of Black and White
- Arya Stark, who comes to Braavos seeking to become no one
Significance
The Faceless Men embody death made into a faith and a craft. Their training of Arya Stark -- a girl burning with names she means to kill -- sets her on a path far from the Stark she was born, toward becoming something other than herself.